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Bite and Scratch
Creations of the disgruntled, possibly discredited, Doctor Beckwith in an insane attempt at revenge against Dr Carina Castle which failed disastrously. Origin The Lie "We should just knock that store over and get ourselves the new smartphones. We deserve it!" "You're a dummy. The only smart thing would be to rob a museum, sell the goods, and then BUY the phones with the money. Duh." "Don't call me a dummy." "Are too." "Am not!" Bite and Scratch are a pair of technology-stealing, larcenous feline bounty hunters and constant low-level threat. They come from the far distant alien world of Felis Minoris and seem to have little goal in life other than the accumulation of personal wealth and comfort. They came to earth following the trail of doctor Carina Castle, in actuality the sentient slugs Slsz and Thlsh, claiming there was a bounty on the couple for violation of galactic law. Bite and Scratch are a constantly quibbling duo, and the heroes of earth never quite know why the two stick together. That, of course, is all a lie. The Truth In truth, it begins with Slsz and Thlsh. When the newly married aliens set up their new life on earth and found employment in a lab, they quickly made many rivals and enemies among the established staff. The most persistent such rival was an older scientist, doctor Beckwith. Beckwith had spent decades rising to a position of authority, and instantly felt that those long years of work were squandered when some upstart girl could just waltz in and do the same or better. "Carina Castle's" long list of (falsified) academic records were truly daunting, with ability in many unrelated fields. To make it all worse, Castle was instantly popular among the lower-ranked scientists and other staff, showing a casual, natural friendliness. Beckwith raged. Beginning to form plots on how to get rid of the upstart, Beckwith tried a number of schemes to discredit Castle, but none worked. Then, one fateful night, Beckwith had on a whim decided to hide in Castle's laboratory, hoping to catch the young scientist doing something incriminating. Instead, the rival got to witness "Carina Castle" opening up like a puzzle box and Slsz and Thlsh emerging for a quick maintenance check-up. Beckwith was initially horrified, but managed to keep quiet, and then quickly realized that this was better than any incriminating evidence. Castle wasn't just an upstart meddler, she was an illegal alien monstrosity in disguise! Beckwith's first plan was to blackmail "Castle" with knowledge of her true identity. This failed miserably because Slsz and Thlsh did not understand the concept of blackmail, nor did they manage to understand the blackmail notes right. Carina Castle left a return message that she'd gladly discuss her true identity with the rest of the staff, and there was no need to set aside that much money for party supplies. Beckwith's second plan involved telling their boss about his newest employee, hoping to gain favor by exposing her. The professor, an older man who had been subject to endless practical jokes and stupid ideas over the years, instructed Beckwith to take time off and possibly see a psychologist if these ideas about dog-sized alien slugs persisted. Now utterly enraged, not just at Castle but at the whole establishment in general, Beckwith came up with a third, much more radical idea. Quietly, the scientist managed to infiltrate Carina Castle's home while the young doctor was off on a vacation. Slsz and Thlsh could easily have booby-trapped or locked their apartment, had they only had that kind of mindset. Instead they had reasoned that nobody would ever have any reason to break in, wasn't that why you made appointments? Beckwith stole as much technology as possible, including a spare exo-shell, a spare for if the "Carina Castle" one would be unexpectedly damaged and need repairs. Beckwith also managed to pilfer a maintenance recording that Slsz and Thlsh had made for future reference, clearly showing the exo-shell and the aliens. Giddy with success, Beckwith retreated to another lab. Over the next few weeks the scientist spent all time poring over design notes, interpreting alien scribbles and reverse engineering alien technology. Castle's rival had grown an obsession with showing Castle up, and outdoing "her" at her own game. Choosing the exo-shell as the most obvious and showy piece of tech out of the stolen loot, Beckwith decided to prove that it could work for a human being. The scientist worked day and night improving, refining and modifying it. But no, that wasn't enough. What if Beckwith could do something even more extraordinary? Like show that a human could control TWO exo-shells at once? Surely that would devastate the ego of those disgusting aliens! Beckwith returned to Castle's apartment, modifying the support equipment for the exo-shell. Managing to construct a second one using an automated function in the equipment, Beckwith on a whim decided to make the new shells exotic and flamboyant-looking. Crafting them in the form of two vaguely feline humanoids, Beckwith gleefully imagined passing himself off as an alien the same way the aliens passed themselves off as "Carina Castle", then revealing the subterfuge and humiliate the alien slugs thoroughly. Beckwith believed the support tube inside Castle's private lab would work as a remote controller, allowing the scientist to control both units at once through a neural interface aped from the original "Castle" shell. Finally, the long work complete and with only a few days left until Castle returned, Beckwith finished the work. Placing the two exo-shells inside the energizer, the jealous scientist entered the support tube, donning the headset within and giving the mental command to commence activation. It was a feeling of giddy triumph, a rush of victory. At least until the dissection tools deployed from within the support tube and began their work. Beckwith's hubris had blinded to scientist to the basic fact that the alien slug species controlled their shells physically, not remotely. As such, the alien machinery had received the programming ordering it to allow a remote control function, but not understood it, and reverted instead to its basic programming. The basic orders had been completely doable - allow a human to control two shells at once. The simple solution was to cut the human down to fit inside both shells. And that's what the alien machinery did, quickly and neatly. The two catgirls woke up on the lab floor with the full knowledge of what had just happened. Unfortunately, the quickly improvised process had also quite literally divided them mentally. Both had one half of Beckwith's personality, but they also only had half (or maybe even less) of their original self's intelligence. The result were two extremely quarrelsome individuals who quickly blamed each other for the disaster. Even worse, both quickly realized that neither of them now had the smarts to reverse the procedure, meaning they were stuck as well. Managing to reach an agreement, they both decided that "Carina Castle" was actually to blame. This had been her doing from the very start! And now they wanted revenge. Sticking to some degree to the original plan, "Scratch" and "Bite" took everything they could, then wrecked the lab to hide their tracks. They then vanished into the night, spending the next few weeks setting themselves up as super-criminals. They decided to stick to Beckwith's original idea of pretending to be aliens, which seemed like a good enough cover. Ironically, they did manage to get some degree of revenge on Slsz and Thlsh quickly, as they sent the maintenance video they had pilfered from Castle's apartment to the professor at the lab. This started an investigation into "Castle's" background and Beckwith's disappearance which eventually exposed Slsz and Thlsh and forced them to leave that life behind, taking up with the Justice /co/mrades instead. This also left Slsz and Thlsh wondering if they somehow did cause Beckwith's death, as the explosion in their lab may have been caused by unauthorized access. Scratch and Bite for their part began their new career, scoring some decent wins early. If anything they retained the technophile tendencies of their original identity, amassing high-tech gadgets to assist in further crimes and try to find a way to restore themselves. While their divided nature makes them less than efficient sometimes, their determination persists, and they are very, very determined to fully get back at "Carina Castle" who in their opinion ruined their lives. Personality If Carina Castle is the answer on what would happen if two minds ran a single body, Scratch and Bite are the answer to the question of what would happen if a mind was divided into two bodies. Scratch is the talkative, planning, charismatic one who prefers to lay out schemes to accomplish their goals. Bite is the blunt, abrasive, direct one who would rather cut to the heart of the matter and start punching. They are constantly at odds with each other, but normally manage to reach some sort of balance between their different views. It does mean, however, that they are less effective than they should be. Scratch can be quite sociable, associating and forming alliances with other criminals, anti-heroes or sometimes even heroes when the situation arises. Usually she drags Bite along in these schemes, though the other catgirl becomes sullen and impatient when forced to work with others. They both harbor a desire to get restored into a (single) human form, but also have enough smarts left to realize that may be very difficult, if not impossible. As a result, most of their antics and crimes are designed to accumulate technology, or get back at Carina Castle (or any other crime-fighter who may have thwarted them). Increasingly, they also steal just to be comfortable, as their divided nature has made them appreciate the simple pleasures of life much more. They maintain utter secrecy on their origins, and only very few have learned of it. They especially try to keep "Carina Castle" in the dark as her learning of their failure in dabbling with the alien technology would be a huge blow to their ego and also attract excessive attention from the J/co/. Powers Scratch and Bite are living, fully integrated cybernetic organisms with semi-organic, semi-robotic bodies. Beckwith modified the originally completely peaceful exo-shell technology into a more martial, action-oriented form. As a result Scratch and Bite are much stronger, faster and more durable than a normal human. They have complemented this with training martial arts and fighting skills, making them a handful to try and contain. Both also have excellent senses, extendable razor-sharp claws that can rend through thin metal, and good acrobatic abilities. As a side effect of their scavenging lifestyle, they have also accumulated a number of technological devices that they have chosen to keep rather than sell to underworld buyers. Most notably they have a sky-cycle, a hovering two-seater vehicle that carries them around rapidly. Gallery 1372400188003.png 1374535989842.png Category:Characters Category:Female Category:Villain